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Jubilation Lee (Canon Character)
Character History Growing Up Beverly Hills Jubilation Lee's childhood was spent in a sprawling multi-million dollar home in Beverly Hills, California. Born to UC Davis-educated cardiologist, Dr. Chen Lee, and his wife, realtor to the stars, Ann Lee, Jubilation was raised with the hopes that she would continue the family's American dream. Having come from humble roots in China, living on the Liaodong Peninsula, Chen and Ann came to greatly value the hard work and discipline that was needed to attain success; they hoped to instill t he same values into their only daughter. Even from an early age, however, it was evident that Jubilation was not as stoic or single-minded as they hoped. While Chen came to love this about their daughter and allowed her to have her way - a far cry from the idea of fatherhood he had developed from his own upbringing - Ann felt more inclined to better groom their daughter into a proper, more disciplined lady. In order to hopefully make her a more disciplined young man, Ann enrolled her daughter into the prominent Los Angeles School for Gymnastics, where she quickly qualified for the competitive team and began competing, finding herself especially inclined to the vault and floor exercise. Her coaches spoke of one day grooming her to participate in the Olympic games. A Mind of Her Own While Jubilee grew up performing well in school and in competitive gymnastics, winning several medals in regional and national competitions, she also began testing her parents' boundaries, wanting to spend more time with her friends and away from home and the gym. Her mother found this disturbing, wanting her daughter to remain focused on her future, which often led them to arguments that Chen needed to mediate. Jubilee found herself growing more rebellious and eager to get out of the house, spending more time with friends and finding herself more frequently at odds with her family's intentions to raise her in a traditional Chinese household. A World Turned Upside Down By the age of fourteen, Jubilee had come to very much desire to be an individual, often dressing in bright colors to make her mother frustrated. However, because Jubilee continued to perform well in school and gymnastics, and because she never had any interest in doing things which were genuinely harmful, her relationship with her parents did not suffer any strain past that of a normal teenager-parent relationship. One summer day, Jubilee was out at the park with her friends and managed to drop a purple Sno-cone onto the new dress she was wearing. Embarrassed, she brought her friends with her to the nearest store where she could simply buy a new one, but found that the credit card her parents had given her was being declined - unbeknownst to Jubilee, this had occurred due to the sudden loss of all of her father's stock market investments, which her parents were keeping secret from her in hopes that their fortune would soon return. Infuriated, Jubilee hurried home without her friends, sure that this was something her mother had done in order to teach her a lesson. However, when she arrived at her house, she found both of her parents murdered. Because all of her remaining relatives lived in rural China and could not be reached, Jubilee was placed in a group home. However, she found herself unable to deal with the others in the home, enduring bullying for the fact that she had once been rich. While she attempted to simply get by for a while, she found that her patience only lasted until she managed to complete her first year of high school - though by this point, thanks to the advanced education she received from exclusive private schools thanks to her parents, she had completed some courses up to the junior level. One night, she packed up her few belongings and left, taking to the streets. Taking it to the Streets Jubilee found herself quickly taken into the ranks of a group of teenage girls also living on the street. Initially, Jubilee was reluctant to allow herself to be helped by them, fearing that they were prostitutes or traffickers. However, she found that they mostly made their living by picking pockets and trading in aluminum cans, and eventually grew at ease with them. After one day collecting and fixing a discarded guitar from a dumpster, Jubilee also taught herself to play, much to the joy of her new friends. They quickly began to use Jubilee's talent with playing and singing and all eventually began to make music and panhandle for money. The generous business people in the district the girls established as their turf were surprisingly generous, as were tourists in the area, looking for entertainment and distraction from a busy day, and as such, Jubilee and her friends were able to make a surprising amount in this manner. They persisted this way for a year, living in relative comfort, given their circumstances. Soon, however, the group of panhandling girls was featured in a local news story, and Jubilee was recognized as a girl who had a year ago gone missing from the group home for troubled teens. They soon tracked her down at an abandoned house where the girls were staying for the night, and attempted to bring Jubilee back with intentions to reintegrate her into the group home and regular school. However, at this point, her powers manifested and she created a blaze of bright sparks, distracting and scaring the police officers enough to allow for herself and her friends to make a getaway. Terrified that she was in fact one of the 'mutants' that were all over the news for doing terrible things, Jubilee pleaded with her friends not to think of her differently, and they in fact embraced her newfound gift with open arms, especially because Jubilee was able to use it to make fires to keep them warm. In the following months, however, they soon found themselves being tracked down more frequently, and despite their continued success as street musicians, Jubilee felt that it was better for the safety of her friends if she got away from California entirely. A Cross Country Trek With a fake ID in hand, she managed to negotiate her way into a temporary job as a stewardess on Amtrak to get away from the people who were pursuing her. She temped as a stewardess on a train to New York with her own bags stowed in the baggage cart. However, she found herself struggling more than she did in California, with peope less receptive to her street music than they had been. She used taxis when possible to get around, and one day in the spring of 2012, found herself arriving at the gates of the Xavier Institute for Gifted Youngsters. Curious about the school, she thought to ask for money from people coming in and out, unaware that it was a school for mutants. However, she found herself instead being led inside to meet the Headmaster. Professor Charles Xavier insisted that she stay. He soon brought up the fact that he knew what she had done to the police officers in Hollywood. Frightened, Jubilee attempted to run away again, but was stopped again at the front gates by Storm and Wolverine, which allowed Professor Xavier to catch up to her and explain that the school was one for people like her. Untrusting, Jubilee agreed to stay the night, but made it clear she had every intention of leaving in the morning. However, she was asked to stay one night after the other and always agreed until within weeks, she had already decided to try and make a home of the school. A New Chance Jubilee was enrolled in extra classes to make up for the time she had been out of school, but found herself catching up quickly, even excited to have a chance to do homework and things other teenagers did. Her enthusiasm, however, brought about teasing and bullying from her peers. One of the first to stand up for her was another student in her grade, a handsome boy by the name of Angel Ballesteros. Because he was so adamant in defending her from bullies, Jubilee came to harbor a small crush on the boy. Over the course of the year, Jubilee found that old habits were hard to break, and often went out panhandling to make extra money, wanting to do things such as at least buy her own food. However, having become close friends with her new roommate, Shelby Sloss, Jubilee found herself doing things like that less and less because Shelby grew concerned for Jubilee's safety when she was out in the city alone. At her first school party, Jubilee stole away from the party with Shelby and two others - Sam Riggins and Balthazar Kaal. The group proceeded to play drunken party games such as spin the bottle, despite the fact that Balt was the only boy playing. After this incident and others, Jubilee began to feel slightly less out of place. Wedding Bells? In the fall of her first year Xavier's, a number of students were affected by what some thought were harmless love spells they looked up on the internet - it would turn out that these spells in fact brought the souls of lost lovers back from the grave and allowed them to take possession of human bodies. Jubilee was possessed by the soul of a woman named Cora Algiers, who perished while working as a nurse in France during the war. Cora's ghost sought out her fiance, a soldier named Eugene Talbert. As fate would have it, Eugene's ghost possessed the body of Balthzar Kaal, and the pair met and finally wed. As Jubilee and Balt were both minors, it would turn out that the wedding was not valid, and would not plague them when they regained control of their own bodies. However, being that Balt was a famous musician, gossip began to circulate briefly about the pair, which Balt often used to get raise annoyance in his mother. After the incident, however, the pair began to spend more time with one another, much due to the influence of their mutual best friend, Shelby Sloss. Moving On Up In the middle of her year at Xavier's, because she had expressed an interest in one day getting into a career in business, Jubilee was offered the position of part-time secretary at Worthington Industries to fill in for Warren Worthington III's personal secretary during her maternity leave. Excited at the prospect of having her own income and being able to do things without mooching off of friend, Jubilee began to put all of her energy into work. However, she would soon find that the time she spent on work took away from her time with more important things - including training, and her friends. After learning that Shelby had been held hostage and subjected to unspeakable things on the street, Jubilee felt remorseful at the fact that she had been absent as a friend for recent months, not even knowing that Shelby had started dating one of their classmates, Stevie Rae Johnson. After this incident, Jubilee committed herself to balancing work with the other important things in her life. By the end of the school year, Jubilee found that while she was able to pass all of her classes with flying colors, she was unable to pass the Danger Room exam set for her by Logan, her mentor, because she was still reluctant to use her powers in any capacity that involved fighting. As such, she decided to stay onboard at Worthington Industries and attend some classes at Westchester Community College while she worked towards improving her abilities.